About

What is Fakelore?

Fakelore is a podcast dedicated to exploring folklore in pop culture. Each episode, Magill and Caitlyn discuss the possible folkloric origins of something from popular culture, and then consult the Folk-o-meter to determine whether it’s folk…or fake.

Who is Fakelore?

Caitlyn Paxson is a writer and storyteller. She has a degree in folklore and writing, and past jobs include being an artistic director of storytelling performance, a fiber arts consultant, a legal document and poetry transcriber, and a shepherdess. She is an editor at Goblin Fruit, and is very interested in the connection between Eurasian Shamanism and animal transformation in fairytales.

One thought on “About”

In the Feral Kids episode, Magill missed a couple that he’s probably too young to recall :). There were at least two episodes of Star Trek TOS that featured feral kids: “Miri”, in which the adult population of a planet had been killed by a side effect of their attempts to prolong life. It slowed aging, but sent anyone who hit puberty into a downward spiral of madness and death. The other was “And the Children Shall Lead”, in which the adults of a small outpost colony run mad and kill themselves (because of the influence of “Gorgan, the Friendly Angel” — guest star Melvin Belli, Jack Ruby’s defense attorney), but the kids play along unconcerned.

I was struck by something during the Age of Ultron episode — the “Creating life is bad” and “Turns against its maker” tropes. Might those also be metaphors for teenage rebellion? After all, what’s birth but “creating life”? And how often does that “life” turn against its makers (aka parents)? Maybe the tropes originated because some bewildered prehistoric parents wondered “Where did we go wrong?”